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Royal family spent $9 million on international travel over past five years: RPT

Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal breaks down a new report which details the airline travels of the British monarchy.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: In today's "Fame and Fortune" segment, royal news for you. How about that? There is some new research out that is uncovering just how often, and how much, the Royals fly via private jet or otherwise. We've got Alexandra Canal here with the pretty outrageous numbers. Can't be good for the environment, Alexandra.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Oh, it definitely can't. And yeah, you're totally right. These numbers are crazy. A private jet firm went through the public financial travel records of the Royals over the past five years to find out how many airline miles this family is accruing. And spoiler alert, it is a heck of a lot. So here's a breakdown of the numbers.

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The Royals have racked up more than 545,000 miles over 92 trips, and costing a whopping $9 million over the past five years. To put those numbers in perspective, that mileage is the equivalent of traveling from the Earth to the moon and back again, plus 3 complete loops around the Earth's circumference. So that's certainly a lot more travel than I have done in my lifetime, that's for sure.

But when it comes to the Royal that is the most well-traveled, that is going to go to Prince Charles over the past five years. He has taken 25 trips accruing over 120,000 airline miles for a grand total of $3.3 million. That's followed by Prince Andrew, Charles's wife Camilla, and then Prince Harry and Prince William round out the top 5.

And keep in mind here that this is strictly international business travel. It does not include any personal time, any holiday vacation time, as well as any travel within the UK. So we're talking serious trips here around the globe. And once again, I just am praying that one day I can be a Royal.

- Well, we already know that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have now left the royal family and their royal duties behind. How does their travel stack up, at least prior to that departure?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah, so prior to their controversial departure, they did travel quite a bit. They took two trips to Botswana. They also went to Ibiza for Meghan Markle's birthday, saw the northern lights. There was this trip that was a bit controversial. They went to a friend's wedding in Jamaica. Prince Harry flew commercial, but Meghan Markle, she actually took a private jet from Toronto. That caused quite a bit of headlines. But all of that racks up.

For example, just one trip-- round trip from London to Botswana-- can accrue over 10,000 miles, and that could cost over $200,000 for a private jet. And it might not surprise you that a lot of these trips are taken via private jet. Out of all of the trips that were examined in this report over the past five years, 61% of them were flown via private jet charter. Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, they are the two Royals that are most likely to fly private. However, they are a bit older. They have not traveled very much over the past five years. They have stuck in the UK.

However, that's not the case for Charles and Camilla. They have flown probably the most over the past half a century, Charles at 18 trips, and Camilla at 12 trips. So, you know, they're living the high life.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I would say so, Alexandra Canal. Thanks so much. You know, imagine if those were commercial flights. They're frequent fliers, the Royals. Their frequent flyer miles of the whole family would be racking up.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Oh yeah, the credit cards up the wazoo, yeah.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Up the wazoo. There you go. I couldn't have said it better myself.